


Porcelain Perfection

by Jennifer-Oksana (JenniferOksana)



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Character Study, Child Abuse, F/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 07:18:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5904715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenniferOksana/pseuds/Jennifer-Oksana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tribute to beautiful things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Porcelain Perfection

 

I think that if there weren’t beauty in the world, I would have lost my mind a long time ago. Fortunately, the one thing this world has, even with too many people and too much of the savagery that nature and God sees fit to allow run rampant, is beauty.

I was born down South, or so they tell me. I don’t remember that, or my mother, or anything, really, before the age of five. Almost the first thing that I remember was looking down at the freshly washed floor, blood dripping from my mouth, drop by drop, making stains I’d get slapped for later. The floor was shining white, with that peculiar clean smell of freshly waxed linoleum. My blood, as I looked at it, was a deep red, and tasted of iron and sour things that made the back of my throat  
sore. I don’t remember what happened– I must have been beaten up, or bumped into a wall too hard, or I don’t know what, but I remember being on my knees, aching and sore, but absolutely fascinated by the colors of blood against the floor.

That was the moment, I think, that I found beauty in all of its abundance. I didn’t think of it that way back then. I don’t even know if I thought beyond a paralyzed awe of the whole moment and  awareness of the colors. But it was the spark, the starting point that gave me something to cling to as I began a life full of pointless cruelty.

Violence, you see, has its own aberrant beauty, a starkness that resonates in a world drowning in useless prettiness, the echoes of  
chatter about chatter that means something about nothing. The sound of a  
gunshot reduces a world to silence in seconds. I like that. I think that  
the cleanness of violence is what draws me to it, like a child to a  
candle flame, something that burns and hurts, but something that’s true,  
something that’s more than doubletalk.

The woman asleep in the sleigh bed is beautiful. She is the blood on the  
waxed white floor, the summer sky lost in blue, the vast expanses of the  
abyss. I watch her, listening to the silent rustle of her breathing, the  
slow rise and fall of her body under the coverlet. It’s a fascinating  
thing, like watching a river ripple.

I shouldn’t be here. Our world is made of glass, and so is our– and I  
use the word in the loosest possible sense– relationship. It could  
shatter into a thousand shards with the least gesture. But the thrill of  
risking it– the feeling of anticipation and fear is a drug. It destroys  
common sense and sends me running halfway across the globe at the least  
provocation. I live for these moments.

I would run anyway, even without her. I started running when I was nineteen years old and my father’s choice of higher education didn’t exactly work out. My eyes are always looking forward. I only look back when I think something is coming after me from that direction. It’s a cruel fact of life, but a true one.

Life is tough. My father told me that. He’d gone through hell in his  
day, facing death in the War, facing persecution in the States  
afterwards, losing his wife– having a son like me– and he distilled it  
down to just that. Life is tough. You move on from there.

The woman in the bed– my woman, a part of me that relishes the idea  
thinks– turns again, and her motion isn’t natural. The sound she makes  
isn’t natural. I think she’s awake. And so the games begin.

“Hey,” I call. “Hey. It’s me.”

“I know. That’s why you’re not dead. Why didn’t you call me first?”

“I don’t have your new number. Remember, you changed it again?”

“What about the cell?”

“I lost it,” I admit.

Her laughter is low and rich, bordering on wicked or regretful. Eyes I can’t see are fastened on me. I like that very much, knowing but being unable to see something. It leaves room for the imagination. There’s nothing quite like shadows for creating something that’s wonderful and completely momentary.

“Get in bed,” she orders.

“Why do you put up with me?”

“Because you have something I need.”

“Homicidal mania?” I ask, pulling off my shoes slowly, and unbuttoning  
my jeans. I could turn on a light, but I don’t want to. Something about  
the darkness– the way the shades of grey and black melt into each  
other, hinting at motion and shape– is extraordinary. I’ve never been a  
photographer, but I wish I were one tonight.

“I wouldn’t put it in terms as strong as that.”

“Why don’t you just seduce him?” I ask. I always ask. I never get the  
same answer twice. I don’t think she knows why. I still ask.

There’s a moment of silence. She turns over, away from me. “It sounds so  
silly. I want him to want me more. I want him– I don’t know– to be man  
enough to take the initiative?” she says, her voice muffled by the  
bedspread.

“It doesn’t sound silly. Maybe a bit girly, but not silly,” I say,  
finishing stripping off my clothes. “I don’t think I could do it, sit  
there frustrated for seven years the way he does, frightened of what?”

“Maybe it’s fate,” she says. “God knows it’s not on our side.”

I quietly walk around to the other side of the bed and slip under the  
sheets. They’re warm from her body, a body I don’t have to see to know.  
I reach out and run one hand along the curve of her waist down to the  
flare of her hip.

“What do you need from me?” I ask again.

“Why do you care? You didn’t come just to ask me that, did you?”

“I’m curious, is all. If you don’t want to tell me, don’t. You know I  
don’t care.”

“You’re so strange,” she murmurs, her breath and voice warm now, close  
to me. “I don’t know why you set out to seduce me in the first place. Or  
why you come back.”

“I don’t know why you don’t call the cops the minute I break into your  
house.”

Her breath draws back, a slow slight hiss. “It’s impossible to explain.  
This time doesn’t exist. It’s above any rules–”

“Of what?”

“Anything,” she says, reaching a hand out to stroke my shoulder. “It’s a  
recurrent nightmare I want despite myself. It’s the hell I punish myself  
with.”

“Catholic guilt’s a bitch, isn’t it?”

She turns away from me again. “Do you come here just to ruin me in your  
head? You told me I was beautiful once, so beautiful you couldn’t stand  
it.”

“Everything’s beautiful if you look at it the right way.”

I can hear her smile even though I can’t see it.

“You’re such a philosopher when you’re trying to get in my pants. Are  
you really here to talk?”

“It’s your nightmare.”

“There’s your answer,” she says, sounding very tired and very old. And  
so I pull her into my arms.

The most beautiful thing I ever saw was the first person I ever killed.  
I didn’t know why I killed him– that was government business. I didn’t  
particularly care about killing him– those were orders. But it was  
unforgettable. The sun was just setting over the tidewater in  
Mississippi– some unpronounceable place whose only claim to fame was  
that Faulkner had shit there or something. The sky was glowing, glowing  
like a candle, in that strange light that only exists right after the  
sun has set. The guy was an old guy, sitting on his porch, looking at  
the sky. I was only about twenty or so at the time.

He saw me standing there in front of his porch, tight and tough and  
without a single motherfucking clue. He probably could have killed me.  
When I think about whom I work for now, the guy was probably an  
ex-Black-Op who had talked too much. I’m sure he could have killed me.  
But he was quiet, sitting there and looking at me without any expression  
at all.

I pulled out my gun, slowly, too early, with a hand that shook too much. The guy still didn’t budge. He turned his eyes back to the sky, to the  
big old swamp trees that were turning to black shadows with the rapidly fading light.

After a minute or two, I got my nerves back together and marched up onto the porch, aiming the gun right at the old guy’s temple.

He didn’t speak.

I killed him. Finally. Half of his skull flew out from the rough impact. The sound of the bullet sent a flock of birds into the Mississippi sky.  
With trembling hands, I put my gun back into its holster. I looked at the sky that he’d been staring at. The only thing I saw was the light  
fade out, leaving only a velvet emptiness. I turned to the body.

He was silent, slumped, blood surging over his face, eyes opened in surprise, like he’d just thought of something to say. When I saw him, sitting there like that, my world turned into something else. Who I was became something else. I can’t explain how it changed everything. And I’m not talking about the killing part.

The light is starting to fade in now as I wake up, slowly adding color to my woman’s form, bringing red back into her hair, turning the sheets  
to cream. I have to go now. That’s part of the game, part of the strange beauty of it. I’m there and then I’m gone, a quick visitation from a world of unspeakable things.

“You could stay,” I hear her say as I leave the bed.

“Don’t let momentary sentimentality fuck with your head,” I reply. “You’re still beautiful, but that doesn’t mean things will change because I think so.”

“Is that all you care about?”

I turn around and look at her again, that pale skin and red hair stretched against the sheets, rapidly fading into daylight reality. I shrug. The spell is broken, the night is over, and we don’t have time for twenty questions.

“It’s your nightmare.”

In the living silence that follows, I finish dressing and leave. I don’t even feel bad as I close the door behind me. So many things are beautiful, but just as many are thoughtless and cruel. Life, after all, is tough, and if you’re not ready for it, then you’re screwed.

And with that, I cease to think about it.


End file.
